It’s possible some of you have noticed I’ve not been around much recently. For which I am sorry - I miss blogging about sciencely things on a regular basis :)
However, life has been…busy. In addition to the whole ‘paying the mortgage with day job’ thing, I’ve been spending time trying to get various projects off the ground*. One of which, happily, I launched last week!
Called IdeaForge, it’s all about bringing together people with ideas, skills and resources, and letting them self-organise and collaborate around Building Awesome Things.
The concept started out as a place for me, and anyone else, to put ideas for use by the greater world: an effort to prevent at least _some_ wheels being reinvented.
From there, it blossomed out into this:
So yeah, the concept is pretty simple: when you go and visit IdeaForge, you see the ideas/skills/resources people have posted which they’re happy with non-members/the general public seeing. Understandably, this represents only a portion of the total number of such posts.
Once a user registers and is signed in, they can see other people’s posts (browse by category, browse generally, etc), make friends with other people on the site (there’s a strong social component built in), make groups and, most importantly, they can post ideas, skills and resources themselves!
So far the response has been pretty positive, which makes me happy :)**
And there have been a number of postings! Some involve technology - coding and app ideas - and some, happily, also involve science ideas! Examples of the latter type include a Messier Objects Catalogue, PlusMed and Placebo(tm)!
So yeah - feel free to head over and have a look. And please do spread the word! Initiatives like this are all about network effects - the more people involved in the system, the better it is :)
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* They fall under ‘social enterprise’ if one were to try categorise them.
** I have lots of ideas for improvements and enhancements, too - trying to organise with people to help me on the coding front :P [My coding skills are meagre to non-existent]
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Related reading:
IdeaForge and the quest to build an ‘engine of creation’ - Idealog, Feb 2014 (pre-launch)
Ideaforge launches marketplace for ideas, skills, and funds - NZEntrepreneurs, June 2014 (post-launch)